Here’s yet another way to make some delicious Freeze Dried Cheesecake Treats - this time with two layers. The tart cranberries combined with sweet cheesecake, chocolate, and orange is an amazing combination!
The top layer is a blend of Fresh Cranberries, Mandarin Orange, Zest, and Cheesecake Filling. The bottom layer is a blend of Chocolate Pudding and Cheesecake Filling - yum!
Here’s What You’ll Need:
1. Cranberries (Fresh is better but frozen will work too)
2. Mandarin Oranges (2)
3. Plain Cheesecake Filling (you can make your own or to save time you can buy Philadelphia No-Bake Cheesecake Filling like I did)
4. Chocolate Pudding
5. Chef Squeeze Bottle Set (with both narrow and wide tips for piping pie mixtures into food molds)
6. Silicone Mats (to prevent sticking to trays - you can also use Pre-Cut Parchment Paper or Silicone Mesh Sheets)
7. Food Tweezers (to load pie bites into deep jars and bags or to arrange in little packets for care packages)
8. Handheld Vacuum Sealer for mason jars (for both regular and wide mouth jars)
To Save You Time, here's my link to the full IDEA LIST on Amazon I curated that will make putting together these Cheesecake Treats a breeze. Whenever we find helpful tools and accessories that will make our FD Life easier we're sure to share them with you!
Recipe For Top Layer: 1 Cup Cheesecake Filling + 1 Cup Cranberries + Zest from 2 Mandarin Oranges + peeled segments from 1 Mandarin Orange + 1/2 Cup Water (Filtered / Distilled / Bottled for better taste than tap water). I used my Vitamix to blend these ingredients for about 30 seconds. The mixture will be thin and easy to pour into food molds.
I transferred from the blender into a smaller container with a pour spout that made it easier to fill the food molds. I only filled them part way so that I could add a second layer once the first layer was pre-frozen.
I placed the food molds into our downstairs zero degree freezer for about 30 minutes to pre-freeze while I mixed up the second layer.
Recipe for Second Layer: 1 Cup Cheesecake Filling + 1/2 Cup Water + 1/2 Cup Chocolate Pudding (I opened up two pudding cups that we had on hand in our pantry but you can also mix up some boxed pudding powder with milk or make your own)
This mixture for the second layer will be a bit thicker compared to the mixture for the first layer so using a Chef's Squeeze Bottle with the narrow tip works very well for adding this layer to the food molds. It's much faster and easier than trying to spoon onto the top.
Once pre-frozen the pieces are gently popped out of the food molds and placed onto freeze dryer trays lined with Silicone Mats to prevent sticking. I use these mats quite often since they are reusable and easy to clean and to store. 
The bottom chocolate layer is difficult to see so here's a photo showing the layers more clearly.
Handle the pieces gently and quickly since they could start to melt in your hand if you hold them too long.
Here are more photos from various angles so you can get a good look at the pieces. The blended bits of Cranberry and Orange make the treats pop with color! They smell amazing too.
It's fun to use a variety of food molds to get different shapes. I used Hearts and Flowers Food Molds but you could also use some Winter-Themed Food Molds too.
We like to weigh our full trays of food items to be sure we're within the capacity limits of our model. According to our communications with HR Support, the #1 mistake users make is overloading their trays! Overloading can lead to excess moisture getting pulled into the pump which can then lead to rust and all sorts of resulting issues.
Simply take the weight of the full tray, subtract the weight of the empty tray & liner, and this gives you the Net Wet Weight of your food items. If you don't want to do the math manually you can also use our FD Log App and it will calculate it for you! Just enter in the first two numbers, add the equals sign, and it will auto-calculate in the field for you!
If you'd like to learn how to custom-build your own FD Log App to track your batches and inventory using your cell phone or tablet, click here to learn more about our online tutorial! 
Here is the tray being loaded into the freeze dryer. We typically load our batches in the evening so that two days late they are ready to package up. Some batches take longer of course - it all depends on the foods being freeze dried. For example, one of our batches of whole, blanched grapes took about 100 hours before all of the trays stopped dropping in weight.
Here's a photo of the cheesecake treats during a dry check. We record our notes in our FD Log App along the way. This is helpful for referring back to later when we're preparing to freeze dry similar batches of food items.
For example, when we do our batches of FD Biscuits and Sausage Gravy or Homemade Chili we know approximately how long it will take since we measure out the same recipe each time. Knowing the approximate total hours helps us to load the machine at a time in the evening which will result in the batch being Storage-Ready-Dry two days later at a time when it's convenient for us to package up.
It's always fascinating to see how food items get lighter in color once they are freeze dried. The flavors are also more concentrated since the moisture has been removed. This is part of what makes these treats so amazingly flavorful! 
Freeze dried food items are feather-light which makes them great for mailing boxes to Family & Friends or when traveling. Just make sure to protect them from getting crushed.
For shorter-term storage or travel purposes we like to use Airtight Plastic Containers with a silicone ring in the lid. In the past we have used snack-sized zip bags for FD Treats, and then packed those in either larger zip bags or in the airtight containers. Everything we have mailed or used ourselves for traveling has been great! Of course, for longer-term storage purposes all of the FD Industry Experts recommend using solid mylar bags with OAs.
If you just need one or two Airtight Containers then check these out - they fit very well in a purse, backpack, or carry-on bag for times when you're on the go. They're great for Care Packages too!
12 oz container (1.5 cup, 3.9"wide x 3" tall)
5 oz container (.6 cup, 3" wide x 2.2" tall)
44 oz container (5.5 cup, 4.5" wide x 7" tall)
We have a Set of Stainless Steel Food Tweezers that we use to load pieces into jars or mylar bags. It can be difficult to fit your hand in and out of jars or bags repeatedly, and these long tweezers fit easily down into the deepest ones. They also allow you to arrange pieces in ways that maximize all of the open spaces.
These treats will be temporarily stored in vacuum sealed jars with OAs until it's time to move them into little bags as we're assembling our care packages. We have Electric Mason Jar Sealer Kits (for Wide-mouth and Regular-mouth jars) that we like to use. Having one upstairs and downstairs makes things easier as we're opening and then resealing various jars in our pantry and FD area throughout the week. Also, if one breaks we still have a spare to use until the replacement arrives. If you have hand or wrist pain, and don't like having to twist the adapter piece on and off, then consider using this Dual-Head Auto-Stop Mason Sealer instead - it has dedicated ends for both regular and wide mouth lids and doesn't require an adapter piece.
We hope that you found this to be Interesting, Informative, and Inspires you to freeze dry some cheesecake treats of your own very soon!
Here are the freeze dried fruits and treats we're gathering up for this latest care package to our Son & his Teammates. Working on treats like this throughout the year also helps to give me ideas for future Christmas Family Gift Packages! The last two years everyone has loved the boxes of FD fruits and treats we put together for them. It's fun to mix things up year to year! Be sure to visit our other posts to see how we made all of these delicious treats!
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